Christopher Knaus

From the Link: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/catholic-suspected-paedophiles-allowed-to-continue-teaching-despite-complaints-20160517-goxam5.html

Marist Brother Francis William Cable

Catholic officials knowingly allowed two suspected paedophiles, including one of NSW’s worst, to continue teaching unpunished, eventually putting St Edmund’s College students at risk for a decade.

One cover-up involved a Marist Brothers principal in Sydney, who was aware that now-notorious child predator Brother Francis “Romuald” Cable was abusing boys, but failed to report him to police.

Cable instead went to Newcastle, where he molested another 11 children before leaving the order to teach at St Edmund’s between 1979 and 1989.

Fairfax Media has also established that the Christian Brothers, who then ran St Edmund’s, became aware of a complaint against one of their NSW brothers, but sent him to Canberra regardless, allowing him to allegedly abuse another boy.

The Christian Brothers concede their past handling of such cases was flawed and that “what happened 25 years ago is not what the community or we would accept today”.

The Marist Brothers say the Sydney principal never reported Cable’s abuse to his superiors, and that the order’s leadership did not become aware of any complaint until 1993, when his teaching career was over.

Francis ‘Romuald’ Cable

Cable hunted boys with an unnerving depravity and audacity before he moved to the ACT, molesting or raping at least 19 students at three Marist schools in the 1960s and 1970s.

However, Fairfax Media can reveal that Cable could have been stopped 12 years before he even arrived in the ACT.

A principal at a Marist school in Sydney, St Gabriel’s in Pagewood, was told Cable was abusing boys as early as 1967.

One victim told police in 2013 that the principal came to his parents’ home, asked him whether he had been touched indecently, and then assured him and his father that Cable had been “spoken to” and would be moved.

The principal failed to report the allegations to the police, and Cable was sent to a school in Newcastle, where he abused a further 11 boys over the next eight years.

Strangely, a detailed, official history of the Marists’ Hunter Valley schools, published in 1998, omits any reference to Cable, despite his decade of service there.

But the Marists say the St Gabriel’s principal never took the matter to the order’s leadership when he learned Cable was abusing children in 1967.

“In saying that, in no way do we contradict the witness statement made in 2013 in relation to events in 1967, and we accept the witness may have told the principal at that time,” Marist Brothers Australia said in a statement.

“However no record, statement or summary of that allegation was ever forwarded by the principal to the Marist Brothers.”

The Marist Brothers said they first received a complaint about Cable in 1993, well after he had finished teaching but decades before police began investigating him. They had no cause for concern when Cable left the brotherhood and moved to Canberra.

The Marists also said the 1993 complaint could explain why Cable was not mentioned in the history of Hunter Valley schools published five years later.

“It is possible that his name was deliberately omitted to spare victims unnecessary discomfort.”

The Christian Brothers, who then ran the ACT college, say they immediately searched their records mid-last year after learning of his prior abuse in NSW, but found no complaints.

“We strongly urge The Canberra Times or any person who may hold any evidence of criminal conduct at the school to refer that to the police for the proper investigation,” the brothers said in a statement.

Cable was a lay teacher at the college, swapping his first name Francis for “Rom”, an abbreviation of the saintly moniker he took as a Marist brother.

Fairfax tracked down 10 of Cable’s St Edmund’s colleagues from the 1980s and told them of his history.

Many were shocked, saying they knew nothing of his past abuse nor of any complaint about him while he taught in Canberra. Several said the headmaster at the time would not have hired Cable had he known.

One clearly remembered Cable for his “ridiculous” contempt for the children. “He just had that real sense of hatred that kind of shocked me.”

Roughly 20 of Cable’s ex-students from St Edmund’s were also found. Some described him as a cruel man, who picked on children and appeared to enjoy corporal punishment, while others said he was an unremarkable teacher who had not caused problems.

“My experience with him was horrible. He was not a nice person,” one said.

It is understood ACT police have not received complaints about Cable’s time at St Edmund’s.

But clergy-abuse survivors have expressed concerns about his decade here.

From the Link: http://www.theherald.com.au/story/3155128/the-mongrels-gone-paedophile-marist-brother-jailed/

Marist Brother Francis William Cable

FOR more than 15 years Marist Brother Romuald – Francis William Cable – hunted children down and molested them, with what a judge described as ‘‘frankly breathtaking audacity’’.

He left children bloodied.

He terrified them.

But in a Sydney court on Thursday his victims, now men in their late 50s and 60s, cheered as Judge Peter Whitford sentenced Cable, 83, to 16 years’ jail, and he was led away.

‘‘I was bleeding after he raped me one day and he said to me ‘You’ve got the blood of a jackal in you. Your mother must have been a jackal’,’’ said a victim, who cannot be identified, who was 12 when he was brutally raped on a weekly basis for at least a year from 1965.

‘‘I’ve never forgotten it. He said I was Satan because I wasn’t a Catholic. It takes it out of you, having to tell people what happened to you, but it was worth it. He’s gone. The mongrel’s gone.’’

Cable must serve at least eight years’ jail for crimes against 19 former students at Marist Brothers schools at Maitland, Hamilton and Pagewood between 1960 and 1974.

He was found guilty of 13 serious offences against two boys at Maitland and Pagewood after a trial in March.

Cable entered guilty pleas to crimes against 17 other victims several days later.

Judge Whitford said Cable’s ‘‘determined predatory conduct’’ over 15 years represented ‘‘a systematic and flagrant abuse of his position of trust and authority’’ over vulnerable young boys.

The former Marist Brother, who left the order in 1978, smiled on entering the court, and sat unmoved as the judge recounted the shocking detail of his crimes.

Two boys begged him not to rape them in the early 1960s.

The boy who was told he had the blood of a jackal was gagged and ‘‘hit about the head’’ when Romuald forced him to commit oral sex during a school beach excursion in the early 1960s.

Nightmares leave the man ‘‘prowling’’ his garden with knives, an axe and sometimes a machete, because ‘‘I think the Marist Brothers are out there still’’.

Romuald pushed his thumbs into the boy’s eye sockets ‘‘to prevent him from biting’’ during forced oral sex, the court heard.

‘‘The boy begged him not to do anything,’’ Judge Whitford said.

Brother Romuald favoured attacks in the water. Boys were abused at Bar Beach, La Perouse in Sydney, Merewether and Maitland baths and the Myall Lakes, where the Marist Brother put on a keg of beer at father-and-son camps.

He targeted children in families where a parent or relative had died, or fathers were violent or absent, or parents were extremely devout.

Brother Romuald showed ‘‘little concern about being detected and certainly no concern for the welfare, wellbeing and security of the victims’’, Judge Whitford said.

‘‘Many of the offences involved cruelty, which included physical violence on occasions, and at times actual harm.

‘‘It is impossible to believe the offender had any motivation beyond his own sexual gratification.’’

Judge Whitford acknowledged the lifelong consequences the men experienced because of the abuse.

Cable inflicted ‘‘considerable suffering, pain and humiliation on individual victims, not just at the time of the offending, but in the decades since’’.

‘‘All of the victims have demonstrated extraordinary resilience and depth of character in coming forward and giving their accounts of experiences that have had inevitably profound effects on their lives.’’

Judge Whitford described Cable’s crimes as ‘‘abominable’’.

‘‘It’s impossible to conceive that the offender had any motivation beyond his own sexual gratification, which he pursued without any consideration for the childhood, innocence, and future of his victims,’’ Judge Whitford said. Cable will remain in jail until at least 2023.

JOANNE McCARTHY

TWO men in their 60s sat in a corridor outside a Sydney District courtroom on Thursday and talked about their school days more than 50 years ago.

They exchanged photos of Marist Brothers school at Maitland, and talked about teachers and the friends who had committed suicide.

Then they talked about Brother Romuald.

‘‘He’s as evil now as he was 50 years ago,’’ said one of the men, 66, who was a timid boy, vulnerable and eager to please when Romuald made him a target.

‘‘As far as I’m concerned, he’s Satan. He did anything he liked without any fear of comeback, without any sign of remorse. He just didn’t care. This is not an idle comment – he’s the most evil person I’ve ever known.’’

The second man, also 66, was a talented child with a gift for drawing.

His parents were very strict Catholics who revered priests and thought they could do no wrong.

Brother Romuald was his teacher in 1962.

‘‘He set us a task one day to draw the ‘Hand of God’ [depicting a reclining, naked male body],’’ the man said.

‘‘I actually did a perfect copy but when he saw it, he called me out, tore it in two and flogged the shit out of me in front of the class.

‘‘He used to do things so that he could flog kids and he took great pleasure out of it.’’

Brother Romuald would sit in an office watching boys play cricket.

‘‘You weren’t supposed to go beyond the line. When enough boys had gone over the line, he would blow the whistle so that everyone had to freeze. Then he’d come down and cane kids. And he was violent.’’

The man who was a timid boy told his wife only two years ago that he had been sexually abused as a child.

‘‘I just put it behind me for all those years, but then there was so much out there about it, it all came flooding back – how vulnerable we were, how young,’’ he said.

‘‘It came up on the news that he’d been charged and I said to my wife: ‘That’s him’.’’

He cheered with other victims and their families after Romuald was sentenced to 16 years’ jail. But outside the court, he cried and hugged his former classmates.

From the link: http://nypost.com/2016/05/14/ex-president-of-catholic-hs-suspended-for-sexual-abuse/

The former president of prestigious Chaminade High School on Long Island is suspended from performing his priestly duties following “credible” allegations he sexually abused a minor, his religious order says.

The Rev. James Williams resigned in 2011 as president of the all-boys Catholic school after serving as 12 years as the school’s president. Williams was a member of the Chaminade faculty and administration from 1991 to 2012.

Chaminade’s main campus is in Mineola. The school’s facilities include a retreat house in the Oyster Bay village of Muttontown, and an estate in the Catskills. The school has 1,700 students.

“It’s always hard for victims of sexual violence to report these heinous crimes. It’s harder when the perpetrator is an alleged man of God. And it’s especially hard in Catholic school settings that are relatively small and tightly knit with deep loyalties and so we are deeply grateful to this brave victim,” said David Clohessy, the St. Louis-based national director and spokesman for the Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests.

“Father James’ clerical faculties have been suspended and he is not permitted to publicly function as a priest. His case will be, as required, submitted to the Holy See for final resolution,” said a six-paragraph statement posted Friday afternoon by the Marianist order.

The Marianists, as per their protocol, have forwarded the allegations to the local DA’s office and the Diocese of Rockville Centre.

The statement did not specify the allegations. Neither Williams nor the order could immediately be reached for comment.

According to court evidence, Pidoto even took a boy to visit one of Australia’s leading priesthood-training colleges (Corpus Christi College, Melbourne) and sexually assaulted him in a room there. Other priests or student priests saw Pidoto with the boy at the seminary but they did not see anything unusual about this.

When Broken Rites established its Australia-wide telephone hotline in late 1993, some of our first callers told us about Father Terry Pidoto. Several of these contacted the Victoria Police sexual offences and child-abuse investigation team (SOCIT). Detectives eventually charged Pidoto with child-sex crimes, and a long series of court proceedings began.

Finally, in June 2007, Pidoto appeared in the Melbourne County Court, charged with 22 offences against seven boys. On 18 July 2007, after weeks of evidence and legal argument, the jury returned a GUILTY verdict on eleven charges, involving four of the boys.

On 17 September 2007, the court sentenced Pidoto to seven years and three months’ jail. He was ordered to serve a minimum of five years before becoming eligible for parole.

Crimes at the seminary

According to evidence given in the Melbourne County Court in June 2007, Pidoto committed some of his crimes on the premises of Melbourne’s Corpus Christi College, where the church trains its priests for all the Catholic dioceses in Victoria and Tasmania.

One victim, “Roger“, stated that in 1972, when he was aged 13, he became a parishioner at St Bede’s Catholic parish, Balwyn North (a Melbourne eastern suburb), which was one of Pidoto’s earliest parishes. Roger said that Pidoto took him to the seminary, on the pretext of showing him “where priests are made”. Pidoto, then aged about 27, was a recent graduate of this seminary.

Roger said that Pidoto took him to a bedroom, where there was a single bed, with three of Pidoto’s friends, sitting around, dressed in underwear.

The three men were evidently seminarians, or recently-ordained priests, from Pidoto’s peer group. Pidoto introduced Roger to these men in a sexual manner, saying ‘Isn’t he cute?’

Pidoto’s friends agreed that Roger was cute. Roger immediately knew that he was in danger and asked Pidoto to take him home. Outside this room, in the corridor, Roger and Pidoto passed two other men, apparently seminarians, both wearing shorts. These men exchanged greetings with Pidoto.

Pidoto showed Roger the chapel, saying “this is where we have Mass”, and then took the boy to the dining room, which was deserted. There, he grabbed Roger’s penis, performed oral sex on the boy and inserted his penis into the boy’s anus.

[Pidoto is not the only priest who has taken boys to the Corpus Christi seminary for sexual purposes. Broken Rites has received complaints about two other Melbourne priests who have done this.]

The priest’s background

Broken Rites has compiled the following account of Pidoto’s career.

Terrence Melville Pidoto was born in Melbourne on 12 December 1944, the oldest of eight children. He was educated to age 15 (Year 11) at St Bernard’s College (Christian Brothers), Essendon (in Melbourne’s north-west). Pidoto has said that he then worked with the Victorian Forest Commission for three years and did Year 12 studies while working. In 1964, aged 19, he entered Melbourne’s Corpus Christi College seminary to train for the priesthood.He spent the first four years at the seminary’s Werribee campus (west of Melbourne), where his room-mate for the first six months was Michael Charles Glennon (Glennon, too, later ended up in jail for child-sex crimes). For the later years of his course, Pidoto transferred (along with other senior students) to the seminary’s new campus at Glen Waverley (in Melbourne’s east).

He was ordained on 22 May 1971, aged 26. By then, Pidoto was already “working” with boys. The 1972 annual report of St Augustine’s boys’ orphanage, Geelong, said that students from Corpus Christi seminary, including Father Michael Glennon and Father Terry Pidoto, “have frequently travelled down to St Augustine’s and have given many hours in counselling, holding discussions and helping the boys generally.”

In late 1971, according to archdiocesan records, Father Pidoto spent four months on loan to the Ballarat diocese (ministering at Donald in western Victoria) and two months as a chaplain at Melbourne’s Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital.

In March 1972 Pidoto became an assistant priest at Balwyn North (St Bede’s parish). He also acted as a part-time chaplain and school “counsellor” at the nearby Marist Brothers’ Marcellin College. The school’s pupils were sent, one by one, to a room to have a private “counselling” session with Pidoto.

Pidoto himself has said in court that, by the early 1970s, he was becoming very experienced at “massage”. He said he had lost count of the number of boys he had “massaged” during his career. He “massaged” boys in their homes, at school and in his presbytery, he said.

Father Terry Pidoto became a chaplain for the Scouts movement in Victoria and was involved in their camps. He had a pilot’s licence and went flying in light aircraft, from Coldstream airport, east of Melbourne, taking boys with him.

A Balwyn North woman, “Ruth“, told Broken Rites in 1997: “I had brothers, aged 13 to 16. Terry Pidoto was always after them. He took them on outings, including a flight in a light aircraft. I never liked Pidoto. He was a creep. But he was a priest of the church, so we gave him the benefit of the doubt. [In 1997] we learned that Pidoto behaved intrusively towards these boys. One of my brothers, at the age of 21, came out as gay and said he had been conscious of his own gay orientation since the age of 13 [when he was associating with Pidoto].”

A former Marcellin College student told Broken Rites in 1996: “Terry Pidoto hovered around the Marcellin sports teams and gave them massages. Every kid knew that Pidoto was touching kids and therefore the Marist Brothers knew. Pidoto once put his hands on my shoulders from behind, but I knew his reputation, so I escaped his clutches fast.”

Marcellin is one of Melbourne’s most prominent Catholic schools. The sons of many well-known Catholics, including sons of Peter O’Callaghan QC, have been students there. (Peter O’Callaghan QC deals with sex-abuse complaints on behalf of the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese.)

Kilmore parish

In January 1975, Fr Terence Pidoto was posted to Kilmore (St Patrick’s parish), 57km north of Melbourne, where he also acted as a part-time “chaplain” at the Marist Brothers’ Assumption College, Kilmore. This was the second time that Pidoto had been given the run of a Marist Brothers school. Assumption College is big on sport and there were many opportunities there for Pidoto to give “massages”.

At Kilmore, the court was told, Pidoto developed a relationship with the police force. He became chaplain for a youth group (the Police Scouts) run by the police. Pidoto was a probation officer for Kilmore and he would “look after” boys who got into trouble with the police. Such boys thus became indebted to Pidoto.

This arrangement was particularly advantageous to any offenders who were students or ex-students of Assumption College. At one of Pidoto’s court appearances (in 2001), a retired senior police officer named Tom gave character evidence in favour of Pidoto. The court was told that Tom had been stationed at Kilmore during Pidoto’s time. Tom said he and Pidoto would help each other regarding offenders. For example (Tom said), if offenders were from Assumption College, Father Pidoto would offer to take them under his supervision, and the police would not charge them. That is, offenders from Assumption College would be let off with a warning and would not have to face court.

[Although Tom did not say so, this arrangement also protected and enhanced the reputation of Assumption College. The arrangement would also be beneficial for any police officer who might want to get his children admitted to Assumption College — a school which enjoyed an unblemished public image.]

While at Kilmore, Pidoto’s reach extended even to State schools, where he acted as a part-time chaplain. A defence witness (a former State teacher) told the court that her State school sent its Catholic students to a room to have an individual “counselling” session with Pidoto.

Pidoto left Kilmore in January 1978. About the same time, Marist Brother John Desmond Dyson (later convicted of sex crimes against boys) was arriving at Assumption College.

Later parishes

Pidoto’s later parishes were in Melbourne suburbs, including St Clare’s parish in Box Hill North (in the late 1970s), St John the Baptist parish in Clifton Hill (about 1979 or 1980), St Pius X parish in Heidelberg West (early 1980s) and St Edmund’s parish in Croydon (during the 1980s). His time at Croydon co-incided with that of another assistant priest, Father Jack Gubbels, who was indecently assaulting boys in that parish.

About 1984, according to court evidence, Pidoto was the victim of a bashing. [This is believed to have been an anti-gay bashing in a public park.]

A Croydon parent told Broken Rites in 1997: “Pidoto used to associate with my son, then aged 11, who was in a Catholic scouts group. Pidoto was a district Scouting official. My son, who is now an adult, is oriented towards males. I asked him if anything happened with Pidoto but my son is loyal to Pidoto and won’t say anything against him.”

In 1988 the diocese promoted Pidoto to be in charge of one of the diocese’s most remote parishes — at Yea (Sacred Heart parish), 80km north-east of Melbourne, where he was the only priest. Some of Pidoto’s victims are wondering if the church hierarchy posted him to such a remote parish in order to get him out of the way. Pidoto remained at Yea, out of sight and unsupervised, until the police contacted him in 1997.

An ex-parishioner from an earlier parish told Broken Rites in 1997: “I visited Pidoto at Yea and he had a boy in his presbytery. Pidoto said it was a homeless youth who he was looking after.”

At one of Pidoto’s court appearances (in 2001), one of his character witnesses (from the Croydon parish) told the court: “I visited Terry at Yea and his presbytery was often full of young people — for example, drug addicts and Scouts.”

After 25 years

While at the Yea parish, Pidoto appeared to be a pillar of the community. In 1993, he was proclaimed as “Citizen of the Year” in Yea. In May 1996, he celebrated the 25th anniversary of his ordination and glowing articles about him appeared in the Yea and Kilmore newspapers on 29 May 1996. The papers had photos of Pidoto, looking holy in his vestments, celebrating Mass with eight other priests.

These articles were seen by “John“, a former altar boy for Pidoto at Kilmore. John (born in 1967) was still upset in 1996 about sexual “massages” he received from Pidoto at the age of ten. In November 1996, John contacted the police sexual offences unit, which already had other complainants about Pidoto — from two males in the Yea parish.

In late 1996, following the widely-publicised jailing of various Catholic Church personnel for child-sex crimes, Melbourne Catholic Archbishop George Pell established an “in-house” system (under Peter O’Callaghan QC) to receive complaints about clergy sexual misconduct. The diocese advertised publicly, inviting complainants to contact Mr O’Callaghan. So John contacted Mr O’Callaghan, demanding that Pidoto should not have access to children. Mr O’Callaghan also received reports about Pidoto from other males.

In June 1997, because of the police investigation, the Melbourne diocese issued a media statement saying that Father Pidoto had been placed on administrative leave until the police investigation was resolved (Melbourne Sunday Herald Sun, 15 June 1997). Subsequently, police received several more complaints about Pidoto, including one from the Croydon parish and one concerning a Catholic school in Ringwood — making a total of half a dozen complaints. And, simultaneously, the Scouting movement removed Pidoto as a chaplain.

In April 1999, the Office of Public Prosecutions gave authority for Pidoto to be charged on summons concerning eight incidents involving three of the complainants — John of Kilmore, plus one of the Yea complainants and one from Marcellin College. Pidoto indicated that he would contest the charges, by pleading not guilty.

Before the committal hearing in the Melbourne Magistrates Court in October 1999, the Yea complainant dropped out. A magistrate ordered Pidoto to stand trial regarding the remaining two alleged victims. The magistrate granted Pidoto a name-suppression order in case Pidoto won the right to have two separate juries. This order meant that Pidoto’s name and charges could not be reported in the media until the time of sentencing.

In the Melbourne County Court in February 2000, Judge Campbell granted separation of trials — that is, a different jury for each complainant. This means that each jury thinks there is only one complainant, making a conviction less likely.

While awaiting his trial, Terence Pidoto (according to later court evidence) was living with the Columban Fathers (a Catholic order of priests, officially called St Columba’s Mission Society) at their headquarters, 69 Woodland Street, Strathmore (north Essendon), in Melbourne’s north-west. The 69 Woodland Street address was given for Pidoto also in the 2001 federal electoral roll. According to court evidence, the Melbourne archdiocese was paying Pidoto’s living costs while he awaited trial. The archdiocese was also providing him with a priest’s stipend, plus a diocesan car, the court was told.

First jury, 2000: The story of John

In the first jury trial n the Melbourne County Court in the year 2000, Terence Melville Pidoto was charged concerning four incidents involving “John” when he was a 10-year-old altar boy at the Kilmore parish — including one indecent assault (meaning indecent touching) and three incidents of buggery or, alternatively, indecent assault. The incidents occurred during “massage” sessions over a period of 18 months in 1977-8.

The prosecution alleged that, in one incident, Pidoto massaged John’s penis and that, in three other incidents, he somehow penetrated John’s anus, thereby necessitating medical treatment.

The court was told that Father Terry Pidoto was a friend of John’s parents. During his frequent visits to their house, Pidoto would take John into the boy’s bedroom, lock the door and then massage him on a table.

In court, Pidoto admitted massaging John, using a lubricant, but he denied committing any sexual assault.

John said he was too frightened to tell his devout parents about the alleged indecent assaults because of Pidoto’s priestly status. Eventually, while John was having marriage problems in his late 20s, he told his wife about Pidoto. At his wife’s insistence, John spoke to a counsellor and finally to the police.

Pidoto’s barrister in the year 2000 (presumably financed by church sources) was energetic and skilful. This barrister persuaded the jury (incorrectly) that John might be “making up” his complaint against Pidoto in order to gain compensation from the Catholic Church.

In fact, however, John had not claimed compensation from the church. His only aim was to get Pidoto removed from access to children.

Jury discharged

Some members of this 2000 jury were confused by the defence’s misinformation about “compensation” (and by the assumption that there was “only one” complainant). Thus, the jury was split between those who said Pidoto was “Guilty” and those who said “Not Guilty”. Judge Campbell, requiring a unanimous verdict, discharged the jury and ordered a retrial.

After the jury members left the court, they were stunned to learn that that John was not Pidoto’s only alleged victim.

Second jury, 2001: ‘Guilty’ verdict

In January 2001, a second jury was empanelled for a new trial on the same “John of Kilmore” charges. This time, the prosecutor was careful not to let the jury be mis-led about the church’s system of compensation payments.

One issue in both trials in 2000-2001 was the question of buggery. Medical evidence could not prove how John’s anus was penetrated; furthermore, if the penetration was done by a finger, this would not count as buggery as the law stood in 1977-8.

The second jury found Pidoto guilty on four counts of indecent assault, instead of the more serious charge of buggery.

Judge Neesham said Pidoto had shown no remorse. He said the priest’s not-guilty plea, together with his attitude in the witness, “militates against any such emotion”.

The judge said a child molester gambles on the age difference and power difference to silence his victim — that is, the offender takes the chance that the victim might speak out later (as John finally did).

Jail sentence, February 2001

Pidoto’s offences against John are serious crimes, with a maximum penalty of five years’ jail per incident. On 21 February 2001, Judge Neesham declared Pidoto a Serious Sexual Offender (under the crimes statutes) and sentenced him to three years’ jail (eligible for parole after 18 months).

The Office of Public Prosecutions was satisfied with winning the case of John and decided not to proceed with a trial involving the Marcellin College student. The Marcellin victim agreed, as he shared the satisfaction of seeing Pidoto removed from access to children after John’s case.

Pidoto had a very expensive and well-resourced legal defence team for his two trials.

Media coverage in 2001

Pidoto’s sentencing on 21 February 2001 was widely reported on Melbourne radio and also in the newspapers — the Melbourne Age, 22 February 2001, the Sunday Herald Sun on 4 March 2001 and the Whitehorse Gazette in Box Hill (circulating in one of Pidoto’s former parishes) on 26 March 2001. This media coverage prompted more Pidoto victims to contact the Victoria Police sexual crimes squad.

After the jailing of Pidoto on February 2001, the case was discussed on Melbourne Radio 3AW by presenter Neil Mitchell who expressed sympathy for the victim, “John“. This irritated Father Michael Shadbolt, of the Doveton parish (in Melbourne’s south-east), who had set himself up as “the Catholic Priests Anti-Defamation League”. Fr Shadbolt published a letter-to-the-editor in the Herald Sun (5 March 2001), attacking Mitchell for having not presented “the church’s side” of the story.

Mitchell then phoned Fr Shadbolt and allowed him to present “the church’s side” on air. The following day, Mitchell interviewed “John”, who gave a first-hand account of the incidents for which Pidoto was convicted. Thus, “both sides” got a hearing. However, Father Shadbolt might have served “the church’s side” better if he had stayed out of the Pidoto affair. In subsequent “talkback” segments, listeners phoned in, supporting John and denouncing “the church’s side”.

Pidoto wins appeal, 2002

Pidoto’s legal team lodged an appeal against his February 2001 conviction. Meanwhile, Pidoto remained in jail during 2001. However, he was still listed as a priest (“on leave”) in the mid-2001 edition of the Directory of the National Council of Priests of Australia. In fact, Father Pidoto was spending his “leave” in the Ararat prison and later the Port Phillip prison. And he was still a priest.

In May 2002, the Victorian Court of Appeal ruled that some inadmissible evidence had been given at Pidoto’s trial. The appeal judges quashed Pidoto’s conviction and ordered a retrial. Pidoto was released from jail, pending the retrial. He had been behind bars for 15 months.

Pidoto’s release was reported in the media, and this prompted more Pidoto victims to contact the Victoria Police sexual crimes squad. Therefore the new trial would involve a bigger number of victims.

More victims

By 2005, detectives had prepared a file for a new prosecution. The investigator was Detective Senior Constable Fiona Bock, who was then at the Sexual Crimes Squad in St Kilda Road (she has since transferred to a higher position elsewhere).

The Office of Prosecutions chose seven complainants for the new trial. “John” of Kilmore opted not to participate in the new trial, because he considered (understandably) that he had already done his civic duty by putting the Pidoto matter on the public agenda in 2000 and 2001. Also, he said, he had achieved his objective, which was getting Pidoto removed from children.

In 2005 and 2006, Pidoto made several attempts to delay or stop his new trial, claiming health problems such as “sleep apnea”. The County Court eventually rejected this procrastination and scheduled the trial for June 2007. Pidoto again pleaded not guilty.

Pidoto also tried to get a separate jury for each alleged victim, meaning that each jury would think that the offence was an isolated one. But the County Court insisted on having a single jury.

New trial, June 2007

Pidoto’s new trial (with the seven alleged victims) began in the County Court in June 2007 before Judge Ross Howie. After weeks of evidence and legal argument, the jury spent one whole day (18 July 2007) considering the various charges and at the end of the day the jury returned its verdict of “guilty” on eleven charges. These included one count of rape, one count of buggery, seven counts of indecent assault, one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and one count of gross indecency. (The words “buggery” and “rape” were used because these were the terms used in Victoria’s criminal statutes in whichever years the offences were committed.)

The guilty verdict related to offences against four of the seven boys.

One one these four was “Roger“, the above-mentioned 14-year-old boy from St Bede’s parish in Balwyn North, who was penetrated anally by Pidoto at the Melbourne seminary in 1972 (at that time, this crime against a male was defined as buggery).

More assaults on two 15-year-old boys took place at St Clare’s Catholic parish in Box Hill in the late 1970s. One of these boys says his mother complained about Pidoto’s offence to Father James Brazier, who was the head of the Melbourne archdiocese’s Catholic Family Welfare Bureau at the time. The boy says that Brazier’s attitude was: “Well, what do you expect me to do about it?”

The fourth victim, a 13-year-old boy (“Sam“), was targeted by Pidoto in 1982-83 after the priest officiated at the wedding of Sam’s sister. In one of several incidents, Pidoto drove the boy to a park, where he masturbated himself (gross indecency) in the boy’s presence and then masturbated the boy (indecent assault). In another incident, he inserted his penis into the boy’s anus (at that time, this crime was defined as rape).

Two of the victims — Roger and Sam — submitted written impact statements to the court, describing how the abuse (especially as it was committed by a priest) had adversely affected their lives. The judge studied these impact statements when calculating the sentence that Pidoto should receive.

The judge also took into account the fact that Pidoto had expressed no remorse about his crimes.

Sentencing in 2007

Judge Howie said Pidoto’s actions were a betrayal of his vocation and had permanently scarred some of his victims.

“These were the premeditated, intentional acts of an ordained priest of the church, a person trusted by the boys concerned and by their families as a representative of what they regarded as the highest good,” he said.

The judge said that Pidoto’s position of power and authority (as a priest) discouraged his victims from reporting the offences at the time.

The judge then listed each of the crimes for which Pidoto had been convicted, giving a term of imprisonment for each charge. The total came to seven years and three months’ jail, extending to 2007.

The judge ordered that Pidoto’s name be added to the Register of Serious Sexual Offenders. He also ordered the prison authorities to take a DNA sample from Pidoto’s mouth, for adding to the national criminal database.

A victim has the final say

Several of Pidoto’s victims, including “John” of Kilmore (from the court proceedings of 2000 and 2001), were present in court at the 2007 sentencing, accompanied by a representative from Broken Rites.

Outside court, one victim (“Sam“) told the media that his experiences at Pidoto’s hands had affected his personal and professional relationships.

Vatican laments Irish dissent, silences priests

Apr. 26, 2012

By Michael Kelly

DUBLIN, IRELAND — Just weeks after a report from a Vatican inquiry into the Irish church lamented what it described as “fairly widespread” dissent from church teaching, it was revealed that the Vatican has “silenced” Redemptorist Fr. Tony Flannery.

The Holy See’s move provoked fury among the members of the 800-strong Association of Catholic Priests, which has accused the Vatican of issuing a fatwa against liberal clerics.

It’s not exactly clear why Flannery, a popular author and retreat director, has come under Vatican suspicion. He has voiced support in the past for opening up debates around the ordination of women, a change to the church’s ban on artificial birth control and an end to mandatory celibacy. He also provoked dismay among senior Irish bishops when he publicly backed Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s 2011 attack on the Vatican in the wake of the report into the mishandling of clerical abuse in the Cloyne diocese. Kenny accused the Vatican of “dysfunction,” “disconnection,” “elitism” and “narcissism.” Flannery described the speech as “wonderful.”

By acting against Flannery now, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith may well have scored an own goal by provoking the ire of the priests’ association. As well as his retreat work, Flannery is a founder of the association, which now represents some 20 percent of Ireland’s clergy. Since its founding less than two years ago, the group has campaigned for liberal reforms in the church and is due to hold a national assembly in early May to harness momentum. Key priorities for the group include “a re-evaluation of Catholic sexual teaching” and “a redesigning of ministry in the Church, in order to incorporate the gifts, wisdom and expertise of the entire faith community, male and female.”

Flannery is the latest Irish priest to face Vatican censure. In mid-April, it was revealed that moral theologian Fr. Seán Fagan had been silenced by the Vatican two years ago. His Marist order even took the bizarre step of buying up unsold copies of his 2008 book What Happened to Sin?.

Capuchin Fr. Owen O’Sullivan also fell foul of the doctrinal congregation in late 2010 after he published an article suggesting that homosexuality is “simply a facet of the human condition.”

More of the same is likely to be in the cards given some of the findings of the apostolic visitation, published on March 19. The summary of the document — oddly, only four of Ireland’s 27 serving bishops have seen the full report — warned that “dissent from the fundamental teachings of the Church is not the authentic path towards renewal.”

A war of words has now broken out — of sorts, since no one of the Vatican side of the argument is speaking at all. Renowned ecologist Fr. Seán McDonagh, a member of the priests’ association’s leadership team, accused the Holy See of “outrageous” behavior in silencing of the clerics.

He accused the Vatican of “throwing a fatwa” at the priests and said that some of Rome’s recent actions were like a return to the Inquisition.

The association has also resisted attempts to cast it simply as a liberal pressure group. “The issues surfaced by the ACP since its foundation less than two years ago and by Tony Flannery as part of the leadership team are not an attack on or a rejection of the fundamental teachings of the Church. Rather they are an important reflection by an association of over 800 Irish priests — who have given long service to the Catholic Church in Ireland — on issues surfacing in parishes all over the country,” the group said in a statement.

A recent survey commissioned by the association seems to demonstrate that the priests are not the Irish church’s only restive members. While weekly Mass attendance is still relatively high, three out of four people who identify themselves as Catholic say they find the church’s teaching on sexuality “irrelevant.”

The survey — conducted by the respected research association Amarach — also showed that almost 90 percent of those surveyed believe that divorced or separated Catholics in a stable second relationship ought to be able to receive Communion at Mass.

The figures were compiled from a sample of 1,000 Catholics and, according to researchers, have a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

According to the results, 35 percent of those surveyed attend Mass at least once a week; 51 percent attend at least once a month. Just 5 percent of Irish people who identify themselves as Catholics never attend Mass.

Eighty-seven percent disagreed with church teaching on an unmarried priesthood and said they believed that the church ought to allow priests to get married, while 77 percent said the church should admit women to the priesthood.

When asked “to what extent do you agree with the Catholic church’s teaching that any sexual expression of love between a gay couple is immoral,” 61 percent said they disagreed while 18 percent of those surveyed believed homosexual acts to be immoral.

Seeming to set himself on a collision course with the Vatican, McDonagh said the survey “confirms that those who are advocating for change in the church are not a tiny minority, but are, in fact, at the heart of the church.”

He said Irish Catholics are “crying out for change and do not want the church to go backward, but to move forward and change.”

A spokesman for the Irish bishops’ conference, pointedly not commenting directly on the findings, said, “The results of this survey confirm the importance of all in the church taking up this task in a spirit of communion and sharing the good news of the Gospel in a rapidly changing social and cultural environment in Ireland today.”

The Vatican seems to be drawing a clear line in the sand. From Rome’s point of view, whatever the future shape of Irish Catholicism will be, it must be a future marked by greater adherence to church teaching. The Association of Catholic Priests strikes a decidedly different note. This Vatican approach, it warns, “may have the unintended effect of exacerbating a growing perception of a significant ‘disconnect’ between the Irish church and Rome.”